Are Butlins right to refuse bookings from solo travellers?

[KimberleyClark]

This woman used to take her son, he has grown out of it but she still wants to go on her own but Butlins Skegness won’t accept her booking on “family breaks” - she can only go on the adults only weekend breaks. Safeguarding reasons apparently.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9eerp43v12o

YANBU - ridiculous
YABU - they are right.

While I suspect this is primarily about money, the fact that more DC are abused by someone they know is a moot point. Butlins cannot practically screen bookings for child sex abuse by relatives. Whereas it's eminently practical for them to ban solo adults.

My guess is that they've implemented this so they can make a load of money from the parents those weekends on ice cream, pester power etc. But if it was even partially to do with safeguarding, the logic is obvious.

If your intent was nefarious, surely you would just invent a child for booking purposes, book as a supposed single parent.

Of course parents can be pedophiles too but safeguarding is about minimising risks wherever you can. You can’t screen all dad’s and grandads coming within a family but you can just ban solo adult males. (And adult females too)

I dare say they’d like to be able to ban just solo adult males, but presumably that wouldn’t be legal, even though paedos are far more likely to be male than female.

I thought that. Never been one on of these breaks, do they check you have DC with you when you come in does anyone know?

No idea, but as long as your invented child wasn't too young, you could just say they'd gone to the loo, were with friends etc. at the point of check in. Or gesture vaguely in the direction of any random child and say 'he's over there'.

She and other solo women are probably the least likely statistically to pose any risk to children whatsoever.
the majority of pedophiles live in family units so the safeguarding aspect is ridiculous.

How have you reduced the risk there though?

It's a shame they can't just ban single men. The chance of a woman being a danger to a child she isn't related to our about the same as being struck by lightening.....men however are a very different risk

Many posters have argued that the safeguarding aspect is pointless because most child abuse is carried out by people known to the child. That argument is ridiculous.

Just because a risk-reducing intervention cannot stop ALL incidences of a crime from happening, doesn't mean we should abandon the intervention.

You might as well say locking your doors and windows doesn't stop all burglaries so let's all give up on door locks. Or - more to the point - you might as well stop telling your children not to walk off with strangers, because most child abuse is carried out by friends and relatives, right?

Children are also at a low risk of being abused by a stranger at Butlins compared to their risk of being abused by a male known to them, often a member of their family. And there is no evidence that single men pose more of a risk than men in a relationship. If anything, those with a tendency to abuse children often seek out a relationship with a woman with children as otherwise they have fairly limited access to kids (unless a priest or youth leader or something).

Makes sense. Would you want single men booking on kiddy breaks?

If she books a room then that’s one less room available for a group with kids in and kids mean spending money on food, drinks, snacks, toys, extra activities that a single older person wouldn’t.

I also suspect that Butlins don’t want people to go home and tell their friends “there were loads of single older people there and we felt uncomfortable/couldn’t get a table/we were worried about the kids bumping into them” part of the attraction is it’s filled with other families and kids make friends with other kids then they want to go back the next year.

There are plenty of other places she could go on holiday.

The are absolutely correct. Had an unsettling experience with a "sweet' lady in her 60s on a resort holiday being inappropriate with my 3 year old daughter last year. I think back now and in hindsight all the signs were there from our first day, but at the time, you try and not be judgemental, maybe she's just socially unaware of boundaries etc. As she never had kids we just assumed that's why she was smitten with ours.

She came with bags of dreamies to feed the cats the resort adopted. That was her hook. My daughter and her would feed the cats around the pool. Every day she would give a pack of dreamies to our daughter. On day two she had a 'gift' for our daughter in her room a few metres away and 'would she likes to come with her to get it' - still at this point we thought she was a safe, sweet old lady. They were gone for 3 mins but such a stupid, stupid thing to let happen and I'm so angry with myself. Throughout the holiday, we couldn't go anywhere without this lady appearing. Oddly, never interacting with our 3 month old baby, only the 3 year old.

My wife went for spa treatments daily and would bring 3 year old as the spa manager loved my daughter and would give her free mini-treatments. One day I forgot to take the nappy bag for the baby from her rucksack, so went to the spa to get it and found her upset. This sweet old lady had followed them into the spa reception. My daughter was talking about the chocolate wrap massage she was going to have when this woman starts touching her legs "oh, will they massage you like this or like this?" etc. My wife said she was discombobulated and couldn't quite compute what was happening. Spell was broken when she saw the look of horror on other guests faces. Then like the end of ' The Usual Suspects' we started piecing all our interactions with her together. So many red flags but only when they were all put together. Even husband who we didn't even realise she was with until well into holiday, never spoke a word, never interacted with us and would just sit in the background staring.

We felt like truly awful parents for assuming this sweet 'old' lady's was harmless.

It's safeguarding because if they let her in they would have to let solo men in too. Why doesn't she just go to Disney.

I do think there's plenty of discrimination against solo travelers esp female but not in this instance.

I think it’s one of those situations where rules have to be made because of a guilty minority, even though it adversely affects an innocent majority.

Of course most adults aren’t paedophiles, and there are plenty of people like this lady, who have no desire to harm anyone. And yes, most abusers are family members or friends. But if you were given the task of reducing the risk of paediphiles going into Butlins, taking photos, trying to befriend kids etc, then banning single adults is an obvious step to take.

OP would you feel the same if this was a man who wanted to go to Butlins on his own?

I know, I'm a fool. 30 seconds later it hit us on the danger we put our daughter in. As I was about to go and find them they came back, daughter beaming with her new baseball cap, and we started feeling guilty for assuming this sweet old lady was a pedo, which is why maybe we gave her more of our misguided trust. This felt like textbook grooming. Every day they win your trust a little bit more.

Your three year old was having a chocolate wrap massage? “Every day” she’d let her help feed the cats but literally the second day the pedo gran got her alone in her room? So after one day? And the manager of a holiday resort loved having a three year old around so much that she got free treatments daily?

It’s not the same though is it

They have a rule and she can go when it’s adult breaks

I don't know why a single woman would even want to go to Butlins. There are lots of solo holidays that would be better.

Of course pedophiles would take advantage of allowing solo adults at a family weekend in Butlins. Very very naive to think otherwise. Safeguarding is thinking the “unthinkable “

This ^

The most common risk to children comes from someone known to the family or a family member. ‘Stranger danger’ is much less common but anything that’s very child focused attracts those paedophiles. Theme parks, zoos, ‘family fun’ days, parks. Places where there are a high concentration of children.